I'm always hunting around for these various bits every time I do an Ubuntu rebuild - so I thought I would collate them all into one place. This is what we use for our dev boxes, not certified for a production webserver. Note this is specifically for Ubuntu 8.04 - it may well apply to other versions of Ubuntu however.

Then it's a case of tweaking the vhosts configuration, to make sure AllowOverride is set to All for your DocumentRoot directory, this will enable Drupal's .htaccess file to kick in, and that's it - your should be all set to start developing on your Ubuntu environment

The problem I have with these "Server Edition" auto installers for linux is they try to cater for every server... even if you select LAMP the P could be PHP, Python, Perl...

At least with the method suggested above (which sounds like you start with a minimal install) you ONLY install and run the stuff you NEED to run. This is important when you're trying to make the most of your server.